Provost Church of St. Trinity (1982)
The Propsteikirche St. Trinitatis was a Roman Catholic parish church in Leipzig . It was built and consecrated in 1982. It was demolished in 2018.
Old Trinity Church
Since the elevation of the Leipzig inner city parish to provost by Bishop Christian Schreiber on July 27, 1923, two different church buildings have been named after each other.
The first provost church was the Old Trinity Church, consecrated in 1847. It was in the center of Rudolphstrasse on the southwest corner of the inner city ring . It was badly damaged by bombs in 1943 and blown up in 1954.
Propsteigemeinde in the post-war period
From 1943 to 1945 the Propsteigemeinde found its home in the Thomaskirche as guests. Later, the services were first celebrated in the university church , after it was blown up in 1968 in the Luther Church , and later in the St. Peter's Church . The provost choir was allowed to rehearse and perform in the Nikolaikirche . He did this even after the provost church was completed in 1982.
In the first post-war decade, there was hope of being able to build a large new provost church at the old location for the community that had grown due to the expulsions from the east . The Propsteigemeinde submitted a building application, which after an initial, hesitant and with many requests for modification approval by the city council was finally rejected in 1958. Another decade and a half passed with negotiations on a new building site. In 1973 the city council declared the negotiations on a new Catholic church in Leipzig to be finally over.
In the 1970s, talks took place between the management of the Diocese of Meissen and the Ministry of Foreign Trade about a new building, during which the foreign exchange financing of the church building was a particular topic. Following these talks, in 1976, on the instructions of the Ministry of the Propsteigemeinde, the Leipzig Council made a plot of land on Emil-Fuchs-Strasse, far from the inner city, available as a building site. Another three years passed before construction work began. The new Trinity Church with parish center was financed by the Bonifatiuswerk from donations from West German Catholics. The community raised the funds for the interior design itself. The church was consecrated on November 21, 1982 by Bishop Gerhard Schaffran .
Provost church from 1982
The new Trinity Church and the parish center on the Rosental were designed by the GDR Building Academy , with Udo Schultz as the lead architect. It was an exemplary testimony to a sacred building of GDR architecture in the 1980s. The interest of the state was aimed at the peripheral location, unsacral appearance and high material costs to be paid in D-Mark . The result was a square, flat-roofed building made of steel and exposed concrete with an 18 m high, free-standing, open bell tower. The sober interior had the character of a hall.
The Berlin sculptor and metal artist Achim Kühn was commissioned to furnish the church according to theological and liturgical specifications .
The organ of St. Trinitatis was built in 1987 by the organ building company Schuke (Potsdam). The slider chest instrument had 36 stops (2538 pipes) on two manuals (12 stops in the main work, 13 stops in the swell work) and 11 stops in the pedal . The playing and stop actions were mechanical.
Four bronze bells hung in the tower of St. Trinity , which were cast in 1981 by master bell founder Franz Peter Schilling in Apolda and consecrated on Whit Monday 1982.
| No. |
Name / inscription |
Casting year |
Foundry / location |
Diameter (mm) |
Weight (kg) |
Nominal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pax vobis 1847-1981 | 1981 | Apolda | 1400 | ~ 1800 | d 1 |
| 2 | Sursum corda 1847-1981 | 1981 | Apolda | 1150 | ~ 1000 | f 1 |
| 3 | Deo gratias 1847-1981 | 1981 | Apolda | 1020 | ~ 700 | g 1 |
| 4th | Ecce Dominus venit 1981 | 1981 | Apolda | 900 | ~ 500 | a 1 |
After only 20 years, this provost church , which was only a few meters away from the Elstermühlgraben , showed severe damage. It turned out that the appraisal of the building site was incorrect. The foundation in particular was damaged by moisture and structural defects, so that subsidence and cracks occurred. The drilling of seven wells to lower the groundwater level, which was far too high, was without lasting success. The roof leaked in many places and only had to be renovated ten years after the inauguration. The costs of permanent renovation would be close to those of a new building. However, there are presumptions that the renovation costs of 4.5 million euros determined in a report commissioned by Bishop Reinelt in 2008 were deliberately given generously in order to renovate the church, which is in a location far from the city center and unpopular by the community avoid. Another report was based on a mere 500,000 euros.
The desecration of the church was prepared on May 3, 2015 with the profanation mass by Provost Gregor Giele.
In June 2015, the GDR building was placed under monument protection. The protection includes the church building as well as the entire complex and the interior design.
On September 16, 2016, it was discovered that metal thieves had stolen a bell, parts of the organ, radiators and door handles. The bell was a 240 kilogram specimen from 1847, which came from the provost church that was damaged in World War II. A metal dealer who was offered the bell, which was cut in two, informed the police. During the break-in, the Schuke organ suffered a total loss through vandalism.
In 2017, the Catholic Propsteigemeinde sold the building and the property to a property company in Leipzig. Despite monument protection, the city of Leipzig granted the new owner a demolition permit in June 2017 because of “the economic unreasonableness of preservation”. One of the conditions of this permit was to preserve the bell tower.
On November 28, 2017, the four bells were removed from the tower, two of which were taken over into the new bells of the new provost church.
In January and February 2018, the church building, with the exception of the tower, was demolished.
New Provost Church (2015)
On May 9, 2015, a new provost church was consecrated in downtown Leipzig opposite the New Town Hall on Martin-Luther-Ring .
The decisive factor for a new building was the peripheral location and in particular the state of construction of the provost church from 1982. The provost community acquired a triangular, undeveloped site from the city of Leipzig opposite the New Town Hall, within sight of the location of the Old Trinity Church from 1847. According to a particularly developed from the point of view of sustainability Architectural competition on December 7th, 2009 the decision for the design by the Leipzig office Schulz und Schulz Architekten was made .
Model of the New Provost Church (2010)
New provost church under construction (2014)
New provost church on the day of consecration (2015)
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Timeline for the history of the community
- ↑ Information on the Schuke organ ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Friends of Propsteimusik Leipzig eV in Gudrun Schröder Verlag Leipzig (ed.): The Vleugels organ in the Propsteikirche St. Trinitatis Leipzig - Festschrift for the consecration of the organ on September 27, 2015 in Leipzig . Leipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-926196-73-6 , pp. 39 .
- ↑ The disposition of this organ can be found in the following work: Freunde der Propsteimusik Leipzig eV in Gudrun Schröder Verlag Leipzig (ed.): The Vleugels organ in the Propsteikirche St. Trinitatis Leipzig - Festschrift for the consecration of the organ on September 27, 2015 in Leipzig . Leipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-926196-73-6 , pp. 44 .
- ↑ Information about the bells ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Diocese of Dresden-Meißen: History of the building problems in the Provostei St. Trinitatis ( Memento from March 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ https://www.bistum-dresden-meissen.de/aktuelles/archiv-2008/ffekten-propstei-neubau-kompakt/index.html
- ↑ Will the old provost church still get a chance? in: https://www.wandererarchitekten.de/upload/16666546-LVZ-St.Trinitatis-2017-10-04.pdf
- ^ Diocese of Dresden-Meißen: Divine service for the profanation of the old Leipzig provost church ( Memento from May 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Ex-Propsteikirche under monument protection. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung , June 19, 2015, p. 16.
- ↑ Day of the Lord (newspaper), issue 39/2016 of September 25, 2016, p. 15.
- ↑ Dominic Welters: Organ has a total loss - The break-in in the disused Provost Church at the Rosental - everything is much worse. So far known: the fate of an old bell, it was dismantled by the thieves with a flex. Two parts have surfaced again. But the Schuke organ is in very bad shape: total loss. Leipziger Volkszeitung , online portal. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .
- ^ Catholic News Agency , August 22, 2017.
- ^ End of a GDR church building. In: domradio.de, August 22, 2017, accessed on August 25, 2017.
- ↑ Day of the Lord (newspaper) , edition 49/2017 of December 10, 2017, p. 13.
- ↑ Information about the new bell
- ↑ Dominic Welters, Jens Rometsch: The demolition of the former provost church has begun. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung. January 15, 2018, accessed January 28, 2018 .
- ^ Propstei largely demolished. In: Day of the Lord. Edition 8/2018 of February 25, 2018, p. 9.
